Speaker 1: My name is Jay Vance. I am a certified medical transcriptionist, certified HIPAA professional, and a fellow of AHDI. I've been in the industry for approximately 17 years, and I have been associated with AHDI for most of that time, either as a member or in a leadership position of one kind or another.

Speaker 2: Hi. My name is Cindy Michael. I'm vice president of APOS Network Transcription Services. I have been in the medical transcription industry for 40 years. I'm not sure where that time went, but it's been an exciting ride, filled with lots of changes and lots of good things that have happened over the last 40 years, and so I'm very happy to be still part of this industry that has survived a lot of obstacles and challenges.

Speaker 3: Hey. I'm Noel Tozan. I work for a company called Immodal. I've been in the medical transcription or HDS industry for 10 years now, all of which have been with Immodal. I had the opportunity of entering the company at the bottom levels and truly working myself up. Today, I act as vice president of worldwide operations for our company and oversee about 8,000 MTs worldwide.

Speaker 4: My name is Mary Schmidt, and I currently recruit for iMedx, a company out of Atlanta, Georgia, who hires medical transcriptionists and medical coders.

Speaker 5: My name's Leanne Wilmot. I'm originally from West Virginia, recently moved to southwestern Pennsylvania. I have my own small transcription company, Wilmot Transcription Plus. Added the plus a few years ago based on new technologies that we can provide to clinicians. Also doing some non-medical interviewing, other types of transcription.

Speaker 3: So, for me, in the HDS industry, our biggest challenge is also our biggest opportunity. Truly our challenge today is that we have an influx of work, a vast variety of work, to be completely honest, that begins with the transcription stage and then follows that document through the entire process. And so the challenge today that we face is bringing vibrant, young people into the industry who are interested in a long-term career path.

Speaker 5: Opportunities for somebody just starting into healthcare documentation, or even someone like me who's been in it for a long, long time. The biggest thing is continuing education, keeping up with changes in technologies, and honing those skills to use those. I think that's the biggest, biggest thing that we have to keep going. If somebody comes to me and wants a job and they've been transcribing for 30 years, that doesn't mean as much to me as somebody who maybe has only transcribed for two years, but has focused on improving their skills and staying current with what's going on. I think that's, in talking to people, the ones who seem to be the most frustrated and the most kind of left behind are those who continue to do things the same way and expect nothing else to change, and everything's changing. And not just in our industry, but everywhere. So on the opposite side of that, the challenges are, if you don't accept that this industry's changing and medical records are changing, healthcare documentation is changing, that's a very frustrating thing, and a lot of people are out there right now without jobs, partially because maybe they haven't increased their skills and focused on new technologies that are coming along.

Speaker 4: Some of the biggest opportunities available now in the industry is all of the opportunities of job openings and the work that's plentiful. You can find many companies that hire new graduates as well as experienced health documentation specialists. Let's face it, there's over 5,000 facilities in the United States, and a lot of those facilities do need our skill set.

Speaker 2: Some of the characteristics that I think will help MTs be successful is having pride in your work, and just as important is dependability. We've seen over the years some lack of dependability, whereby transcriptions aren't showing up for the shifts without notifying us, and that causes patient safety and patient care concerns as well as client disappointment. Another thing that I've seen is resumes that are not professionally written, and the transcriptions, I've actually gotten texts that are in abbreviated form, like BRB for Be Right Back or Hi There, and resumes should not really start out with Hi There, and taking pride in your work, keeping up, honing your skills, being able to know how to investigate, what are your search engines, WebMD, Drugs.com, taking the time to work with the details and make sure that you put out a quality report. Proofread, dependability, enthusiasm, attitude, all of those things are what make a good transcriptionist a good transcriptionist.

Speaker 1: The world, the industry, certainly the health care delivery system is changing at such a rapid pace, so we have to be able to change and adapt in order to stay relevant, and so the ability to adapt, the ability to realize that the job has many facets, and to be willing to learn, to be willing to be versatile enough to meet the challenges that we already know about today, and perhaps challenges that we aren't even aware of that may be around the corner tomorrow, again, with those challenges will come opportunities, and the successful health care documentation specialist, the successful medical transcriptionist, will be someone who can adapt, who can be versatile, and be ready for whatever the future holds.

Speaker 3: So, as I mentioned before, really the qualities that we're looking for in an employee are flexibility, the willingness to adapt, and most importantly, someone who's looking for a long-term career path. We need someone who's going to be able to adapt to constant changes. I mentioned before that our platform is built for MTs and by MTs. What that means is we're taking the advice of our employee base, and we're developing enhancements in our platform that allows our employee base to become more productive and produce better quality documents, which in the end is going to equal a higher income for that employee.

Speaker 1: I would not hesitate to recommend to someone who was interested in this field to seek out a quality training program and to follow that trail, follow that path wherever it leads, because I do believe that the future holds a number of great opportunities for medical transcriptionists and health care documentation specialists.

Speaker 3: It's important for us to continue to evolve as an industry, as a supporter of the health care documentation services industry. I cannot stress enough the importance of bringing fresh blood, if you will, into the industry, so without a doubt. And again, the training doesn't stop at entry level, entering into the medical transcription job profile. That training continues, and it's truly a career path. Again, I can't stress that enough. As our customer base is looking to us to help them with additional needs, as a company, and as an industry truly, we need to be flexible enough to meet those customer needs. So that training doesn't stop as you enter that first entry level MT position. There are so many opportunities ahead from a QA level to billing, coding, document preparation, all of these areas. So the training doesn't stop. It's ongoing, and it's incredibly important for our industry.

Speaker 1: I have had the opportunity to work with CanScribe graduates, and my overall impression from working with these individuals is that they come out of the training program with a very solid skill set with that core knowledge of the industry, a knowledge of the language of medicine, a knowledge of what it takes to be a successful healthcare documentation specialist or medical transcriptionist. So my experience with CanScribe is that it's a great opportunity. So my experience with CanScribe graduates has been very positive.

Speaker 4: A lot of times I run across MTs who have maybe not worked in this profession for a few years, and all they really need is a refresher course. I have been waiting for years for some school to offer a refresher course for those MTs who are waiting and wanting to get back into the profession, or maybe someone who needs a little bit further skills and training to come up to the speed where we need them to be.

Speaker 3: At Immodal, we consider CanScribe a strategic partner, truly. We've developed a relationship with CanScribe over the years that has now allowed us to have a 97% acceptance rate of all of our candidates that we get from CanScribe. So absolutely lots of great successes. Truly an advantage is the willingness of this CanScribe team to adapt and work with the Immodal team to meet our needs as far as the development programs, as far as the candidate base that is offered to us. Again, 97% higher rate, and a very high success rate of those candidates who enter our team.

Speaker 5: Looking at the testings that some of the students have done, I think it was very comprehensive. It covered a lot of materials, and so I think the training that is being done is full, and I think that people who are coming out of CanScribe should be confident and able to step into jobs.